Human Rights

[Update3 – 10PM February 8] Edwin Hart Turner was executed at 7:21PM EST after receiving a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Turner, represented by attorneys from the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, had filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court arguing that the execution would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments because at the time of his offense Mr. Turner suffered from a serious mental illness.

In the upcoming weeks, the legislators of my home state of North Carolina will be faced with a dilemma: how does a government compensate victims of a historical atrocity that was deemed legal at the time? At the national level, this question is often asked in the context of slavery […]

Many studies have demonstrated a strong correlation between the number of women in any given legislature or policy-making body and the extent to which that body takes up issues deemed important for women. On Sunday, the newly-formed United Nations entity, UN Women, announced that it was accepting applications for grants, with a focus on projects seeking to empower women in Arab countries transitioning to democracy. It’s only where real action occurs that women start to be empowered and involved in a way that strengthens a country’s democracy, making it responsive to the needs of all its population, not just the men.

At the conclusion of oral arguments on Wednesday, pundits were left guessing whether the Supreme Court would declare that Americans’ constitutional right to privacy bars prison officials from strip searching them if and when they are jailed for minor, nonviolent offenses. The case, Florence v. Bd. of Freeholders, explores both […]

Jaycee Dugard has filed suit against the U.S. government, alleging that the failure of law enforcement officers to adequately monitor her captor – a federal parolee – contributed to her nearly twenty-year confinement in a California backyard, during which time she endured multiple rapes. In doing so, Dugard challenges decades-old […]

U.S. jurisprudence has dealt with constitutional rights since the enactment of the U.S. Constitution. In contrast, it was explicitly decided by the framers of the Australian Constitution to not include a similar Bill of Rights, although the American notions of judicial review, separation of powers, and federalism were incorporated. Accordingly, throughout Australian history courts have rarely acted to protect civil rights on the basis of constitutional interpretation. This method of rights protection has been largely inadequate to protect Indigenous Australians from breaches of their civil rights, particularly in regards to equal protection and racial discrimination.

While the world watches and waits for news on Davis, Lawrence Russell Brewer was put to death in Texas. Brewer is one of the men who, in 1998 in Jasper, Texas, dragged James Byrd, Jr. behind his truck. As easy as it is to hate Brewer, to hate the terrible crime that he committed, to hate his hate, his victim’s son, Ross Byrd, doesn’t want to see him die. “You can’t fight murder with murder.”

This year in May, Georgia passed “one of nation’s the toughest immigration measures.” It is one of the many copycat laws modeled after Arizona’s severe immigration legislation. A month after its passage, a federal judge blocked provisions of the law that required police officers to check the immigration status of suspects without an identification card and that punished people who knowingly harbor or transport illegal immigrants. The judge found that the law reflected a misinterpretation of federal law and could violate civil rights.

While driving with his family in March 2005, Albert Florence was arrested on a bench warrant for failing to pay a court fine. Florence had, in fact, paid the fine years before and the matter was eventually resolved – but not before Florence had been repeatedly strip-searched by prison officials during a six-day stay in county correctional facilities. The invasiveness of the facility’s intake procedures is jarring, especially in light of the inconsequentiality of Florence’s purported offense. But are the procedures constitutional?